GM encourages committee participation

Newly elected GM looks forward to a term of student awareness

I’d like to thank you for electing me to be your 150th Grand Marshal! It’s been a long journey, and I’d like to share with you a bit about what I’ve learned while campaigning these past weeks.

A lot of what I’ve worked on in student government up until now has been about opening up communications for students to work with faculty on what we experience in our academic environment. When I’ve told students that we have this collaborative relationship, a lot of new ideas have surfaced, and I’d like to share a couple of ideas of what students have said would be helpful.

Course or seminar series to teach students new software that companies are using, in order to better prepare them for upcoming summer internships.

Accessing research centers of the nearby University of Albany, as there are already courses at RPI that allow students to travel off-campus for segments of their course.

That being said, I would like to help students understand a lot more of how the Student Senate operates within our committees. While our general body meetings allow students to learn a lot about our high priority topics, our committees are where we get to express the energy and motivation that senators and non-senator students have for the projects that we work on. This is where our projects originate; from our picnic tables, to our on-campus pharmacy work. In the next few weeks, I will be calling out to the student body for those who are interested in being a part of the work that we do in the Student Senate. These are the committees that we will be having in the coming school year: the Academic Affairs Committee, the Community Relations Committee, the Facilities & Services Committee, the Hospitality Services Advisory Committee, Student Government Communications Committee, Student Life Committee, and the Web Technologies Group.

While these are the committees (and sub-committees) that I will promote with the Student Senate, if there is a strong interest for a specific project area on campus, I am encouraging students to form a group to work on projects in that area together. My goals for the Student Senate this year are to expand our relationship with faculty and administration to discuss our academic environment, expand our community beyond our campus, and encourage students to take a hand in what changes they would like to see on campus by working with our Student Senate.

I’d like to end my first Top Hat with an acknowledgement to Michael Han ’16, who ran a great campaign, and who has proven himself to be a talented and capable individual in the Student Senate. I look forward to working with him to ensure that this coming year is successful for the Student Senate.

If you have comments, questions, or concerns, you can reach me at gm@union.rpi.edu.